Aside from Samsung and Sony basically there’s no other big company constantly exploring the sub 5 inch phone segment. Sony is doing it with the Compact models and Samsung has the Galaxy A3 range. The latest such unit is the Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017), that we unboxed below. It’s priced at $283 on Amazon and it was announced in January.

It has a few novelties from the predecessor, like the waterproofing and fingerprint scanner. Inside the box we find a manual, USB Type C cable, headphones and the charger. The USB Type C port is also new to the A3 series and this handset is available in black, blue, or gold. It’s available with a 3D glass panel upfront and one at the back, gently curved.

The handset measures 7.9 mm in thickness, weighs 138 grams and integrates a 4.7 inch Super AMOLED 720p display. The CPU here is an Exynos 7870 octa at 1.6 GHz, accompanied by 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, of which 9.7 GB are available for the user. There’s a microSD card slot, a 13 MP back camera with F/1.9 aperture, plus a front 8 MP shooter.

The battery has a 2350 mAh capacity and we also get 4G LTE ad NFC. Somehow the OS is Android 6.0 Marshmallow, not Nougat, but elements from the Galaxy S8 UI make their way here. We’ll review the phone and be back with a full review soon. You can get the handset here.